help with Compressor / Limiter

[Seth Bloombaum]

Well, your tag line of “limited ears” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’m not trying to be insulting, it’s just that if you don’t have confidence in your ear then it’s pretty hard to mix or compress for any sort of paying project. When do you know its right? Listen to reference monitors or reference headphones and listen very carefully.

But that aside, you might be using a ratio of 1.5-3:1 (start with 2.5), attack of 0-100ms (some prefer a slower attack, but this is what I like), release of 500-1500ms (some prefer faster…), which leaves gain and threshold. Gain is (usually) output gain. If you need more gain into your recording device then turn it up. But 0 is a great place to start.

Threshold is a little harder – turn it down until you can see/hear the compressor start to work. “See” meaning you have a gain reduction meter on your compressor, right? Turn down threshold until you start to see your peaks reduced by up to 3db and see how you like that sound. Too much? Try either turning up threshold or turning down ratio.

This whole approach might be called “taking a little off the top”, controlling your program peaks so you can increase the average loudness. Good for the spoken word. There’s another approach of “limiting dynamic range” used more often in music, where ratio is modest, threshold comes down, and release is long.

[Philip Boal]

Thanks Seth,

I will give it a try this morning when I’m back in the studio.
I appreciate the “Take a little off the top” line because that’s what I’m really going for.

phil